Look Mexico

The Crucial Collection

The Crucial Collection is an odds and ends disc put together by Florida’s Look Mexico. They are a band with a compelling sound, hearkening back to late-80s, early-90s indie rock. Surely influenced by the likes of Sebadoh, Look Mexico sings songs to the navel-gazing fourteen-year-old in all of us, happy to sing their whining (that’s a good thing here) punk-tinged indie rock. The best of these songs come from the previously issued The Crucial EP and So Byzantine. Songs like “Come On, We Are Talking About You Here” seem simple and self-aware at first, but unwind and expand into deceptively grand songs. The band’s size sneaks up on you, and that ability to surprise within their songs in the band’s biggest strength. The rest of the stuff here—mostly comp tracks and remixes—isn’t quite as successful and sounds like necessary tack on for this sort of disc. But there’s enough here to build anticipation for a new long-player by these guys. If you still think about that girl in your math class you never talked to, Look Mexico has a soundtrack for the teenage you.

The Crucial Collection

Matthew Fiander is a music critic for PopMatters and Prefix Magazine. He also writes fiction and his work has appeared in The Yalobusha Review. He received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from UNC-Greensboro and currently teaches writing and literature at High Point University in High Point, NC. You can follow him on Twitter at @mattfiander.